Special Forum

To many in the Chinese leadership the global financial crisis revealed that advanced Western capitalist democracies are “paper-tigers.” This assessment led to growing voices questioning if Deng Xiaoping’s “hide and bide” dictum for foreign policy was still appropriate. Prior to Xi Jinping coming to power in late 2012 the Chinese leadership had no consensus on how to move forward beyond Deng. Questions pertaining to China’s long-term visions—such as what kind of power it should be, what type of international responsibilities it should and should not shoulder—were distracted by short-term calculations.1 Under Xi China has developed a new global strategy, one of securing the uninterrupted rise of China, in contrast to the strategy of peaceful rise adopted by Hu Jintao, Xi’s predecessor.2 At the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in October 2017, Xi declared that China had entered a “new era” that would make the “great leap” from “standing up” (with the establishment of the PRC), through “getting rich” to “becoming strong.”3

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